Gitte Moos Knudsen

Gitte Moos Knudsen is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and serves as Chair of the Neurobiology Research Unit at Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet. With over 30 years of experience, she is a translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist whose research focuses on brain disease mechanisms and responses to neuromodulatory interventions.

Her research interests span neurology, brain research, neuropsychopharmacology, PET imaging, fMRI, and translational neuroscience, with particular expertise in serotonin research, psychedelics, alcohol use disorder, depression, and epilepsy. She utilizes advanced imaging techniques including PET brain scanning to image brain receptors and fMRI to evaluate drug effects on brain hemodynamics and functional connectivity.

Her recent publications (2023-2025) demonstrate a strong focus on psychedelic research, serotonin receptor mapping, depression treatment mechanisms, and addiction neuroscience. These works reveal consistent themes in neuromodulation, receptor occupancy studies, and the application of advanced imaging techniques to understand brain function in health and disease.

• Mogens Fog Prize 1993
• Synthelabo Recherche Award 1994
• Anne Bochardt Prize 1999
• Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 2004
• Carlsberg Foundation Researcher Award for Sciences, 2014
• Kuhl-Lassen Award 2024

As leader of the Neurobiology Research Unit (NRU) since 2004, she oversees approximately 120 staff members and affiliates, publishes around 60 peer-reviewed papers annually, and manages an annual budget of roughly $5 million. She serves as Principal Investigator of the strategic alliance BrainDrugs since 2019, funded by a Lundbeck Foundation grant of 2.1 million euros. Her research institute supervises about 30 national and international pregraduate and PhD students each year.

She leads the NRU laboratory focused on precision medicine approaches to identify optimal treatments for patients with major depressive disorder or epilepsy, working within the BrainDrugs alliance. Her team employs sophisticated molecular imaging techniques and maintains strong international collaborations across multiple research consortia.